Still Waters
by OldFashionedGirl95
Summary: All together, they went further up and further in, and the adventure never came to an end. Susanfic. LB AU. Complete.
1. Seeking Green Pastures

**AN: I was chatting with Laura Andrews about a LB AU, and all of a sudden this was born. I wrote up a version of it all in one go, after midnight, two nights ago, and then WillowDryad helped me polish it and inspired the ending. She encouraged me to post it all in one go, but I'm stubborn (and the epilogue isn't quite behaving yet) so this is just the first half. I hope to post the end Tuesday, and I may be changing the title. **

**Yellow smog in London borrowed from A. Conan Doyle, annoying Professor behavior from Prof. Kirkpatrick, known as The Great Knock in Surprised by Joy, the back bedroom in Cambridge from Voyage of the Dawn Treader, much description borrowed or inspired by The Magician's Nephew, and mangled quote from the Twenty-Third Psalm. **

**The dog, on the other hand, is mine.**

* * *

_The Lord is my Shepherd; I sha__ll not want.  
He makes me lie down in green pastures:  
He leadeth me beside the still waters.  
He restoreth my soul.  
~ Psalm 23_**  
**

* * *

The air in Cambridge that winter, the winter of 1949-50, was not tinged greeny-gold with sunshine through tree leaves. It was not the thick, choking yellow smog of Edmund's Sherlock Holmes stories. (She had given those books to Mr. Puffett, the schoolmaster, along with Peter's old copy of Virgil, the one that had been new until Professor Kirke bent back the covers and jotted notes on the pages.) Some days the sun shone with a wan yellowish light, but more often the clouds draped the sky and the light was thin and grey.

Once, Miss Pevensie had never worn black. War might have hung overhead, but she had always looked her best in made-over and let-down but carefully-tailored frocks. The pencil lines down the backs of her legs, carefully drawn to mimic stocking seams, were always straight, and her hair curled softly about her shoulders. It was patriotic, then, to look one's best, and if she sometimes stayed out late at the dances, "cutting a rug" with the other girls and the American GIs, she always slept well when she got home.

It is children who sleep well, knowing that there might be a dragon in the closet but St. George will guard them; that the bombs might buzz overhead but that Daddy would protect them. And Daddy had protected them. The bombs had missed their house all through the war. The children had grown up and finished school. Susan had gotten a pair of real nylon stockings and started to wear dark red lipstick when she went dancing. Then, without warning, in an explosion like a forgotten minefield years after after V-Day, all was wiped out. Her mother's pearls, her father's books, and Lucy's snub-tailed dog were left, but her whole family—her Rock, her Protector, her Light, and her dear father and beloved mother besides—all were gone. Who was there to look her best for? Life must go on. Life would go on, though draped in black. But she could no longer sleep.

The houses and most of the things she had sold or given away. A few things, with which she could not bear to part, she had hurried into a trunk. And then, garbed in one of the black dresses her mother had bought thirteen years earlier for the death of the King, followed mournfully by the dog, she went down to Cambridge and moved into Aunt Alberta's back bedroom, where there was plenty of fresh air—not warm and green and lively, nor dense and yellow and deadly, but chill and snowy-silent.

At night she woke gasping for breath, choked by tears. She would sit up, the bedclothes wrapped around her, and stare at the picture on the wall. If there had ever been magic in it, there was none now, though the eye in the dragon-prow followed her in the dark. The blue and green and purple of oil paint over gesso on a stretched canvas (she touched it once, to be certain) were faded and dusty, but when she turned away from it she would pull the blankets over her head to block out the dragon's eye. She could feel the cold tears trickling down the side of her face and pooling in her ear, and she could not get warm.

Aunt Alberta did not like the dog in the house. Sometimes, though half-ashamed of her childishness and telling herself it was too cold outside for the poor thing, Susan snuck it into her bedroom and coaxed it up on the bed. She clung to it until it whined and squirmed away to shake itself and lie carefully across her feet, and at last she fell into an exhausted and fretful sleep.

In the morning she brushed her limply dull hair and twisted it severely back. Aunt Alberta said she was losing weight. Susan said it was the slimming effect of black, but she dabbed a little of her old lipstick on her bloodless lips before walking to work, where she clicked cold metal keys to print efficient black letters on colorless paper.

Once, each day had been different, with its bustle of duties and small happinesses and meals where conversation flowed like wine. Now the days dropped one by one and all alike from the thread of fate, and if there had been wine in that teetotalling house it would have soured into vinegar.

At last a day came where the numbing monotony broke. The snow had melted, and the withered remains of the year's first flowers were bent under a steady drizzle of rain. Aunt Alberta was out and Uncle Harold in his study, and the dog looked so mournful that she wrapped him in a towel and smuggled him into her bedroom. It was a Saturday afternoon, with no work to occupy her mind.

At last she dragged the trunk of things from her family out (unconsciously sitting with her face toward the dragon-ship—she had never liked leaving monsters where they could sneak up on her) and went through it. There were Lucy's paintings and her recorder, the worn chess-set she had kept to remember the boys by. Father's diaries from the years before her birth, the pages filled with his close, neat hand; the copy of Newton's_ Principia_ that she would never read. And there was a smaller, cigar-sized box: she had never opened it but kept it untouched, not daring to see what had been taken from—the bodies.

The dog had scratched his towel into a corner and came to lay his head in her lap. She rubbed his ears absently as she opened the box. It wasn't much. A few bob. Half a crown. Lucy's tattered copy of _Alice_. A little cloth bag with a drawstring. And through her overwhelming grief there came a ray of curiosity. She loosened the drawstring to shake the contents into her hand.

The back bedroom disappeared with not even a wink from the dragon's eye and for a moment she saw nothing at all. Then she was moving rapidly upward, it seemed, and then she was scrambling out of a deep pool onto a grassy bank in a warm and very green forest. The dog, who had come with her, shook itself instinctively and sat on the bank. She stood there a moment, looking around. Here the light shone green and alive through the leaves, and the air was thick enough to breath. Here, no chill breeze sapped the air of its warmth. Here the stillness was not of death but of peace and quiet life. Here there were no grey cobblestones marring the green of the earth, no ice whitening the clear blue of the pools dotting the ground every few yards, between the reddy-brown trunks of trees. It seemed the first color she had seen in an age.

After she had looked a long time at the green of that wood, she looked down. She was wearing black. There was a dog drinking from the pool (she had a thought that it had come with her, but then she thought they had both been there in that greenness for always). It was black, too, but somehow it was a rich black, and seemed as alive as the verdant warmth all around. There was a little black bag in one of her hands, and a round yellow ring in the other. That was odd. She did not remember what they were for. She would put the ring in the bag so it would not be lost. She slid her hairpins out, too, and dropped them in, feeling a cold knot in her stomach loosen its somehow-forever-clenched grip as her hair fell out of its hard twist.

There. She would set the bag by the edge of the pool and take a drink. The water was fresh and cool and tasted better than anything. She washed her face and thought she was washing away a dim blackish-grey cloud of something—what, she did not try to remember. The dog had curled itself in the grass and closed its eyes. An old phrase shaped itself in her mind._ Lie down . . . beside still waters._ She would do as the dog had done.

The turf was soft and springy. It was warm, too, deliciously warm. She did not think she had ever been this warm. She could stay here forever. She closed her eyes. The light was golden through her eyelids, and she could feel the greenness around her, and with a sigh, she slept.


	2. Fleeing the Shadow of Death

**AN: Thank you to all my wonderful reviewers! You brightened my day tremendously, and I just had to post the next part. This is where the AU comes in. I was half-planning to leave Susan slumbering in the Wood forever, or at least until all the worlds ended, and then WillowDryad suggested this twist. You may want to have _The Last Battle, Chapter 14: Night Falls on Narnia_ handy. **

**Personally, I would have ended it with this segment, but there is an epilogue forthcoming, when I can wrestle it into shape.**

**Disclaimer: Only the black dog is mine. Even the plot was suggested by a friend. I tried to promise her some of the royalties, but I don't get any either. So review, and you'll be making two people happy. :-)**

* * *

_Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,  
I will fear no evil: for Thou art with me;  
Thy rod and Thy staff they comfort me._  
_~ Psalm 23_**  
**

* * *

She slept for hours or days or years, cradled in the fertile warmth of that primal forest, where the soil was rich and red, the pools were deep and blue, and the green trees and verdant grass whispered to themselves as they grew; and she did not shiver in her slumber with dreams of staring dragons, but floated in the deep unconsciousness of a very young child who doesn't yet know of such things. Yet whether it was a hundred years or a day that she lay in that changeless wood, at last something woke her.

She stirred, and opened her eyes. The dog had lifted its head, too, and they listened until they heard what had woken them. It was the sound of a horn far, far away: a high and piercing note of terrible beauty—though it had seemed nothing could be called terrible in that place—calling to them. The dog whined, and shook itself. She rose and looked about her. There was a little pouch there, a drawstring bag, and she bent and picked it up. Inside, she saw her hairpins jumbled about with faintly vibrating, green and yellow rings. As if in a dream, she reached for a green ring, dropping the bag where it had lain.

The dog was standing at the edge of another pool a few yards away, looking into it and whimpering. She could not longer hear that trumpet-note, but she felt it pulling her to the edge of the pool. There had been a time in her life when she would have thought of her appearance—her dress rumpled from sleep and her face washed of color—but that time was long past, and though the old, natural glow had come back into her cheeks, she did not know or care. The dog pressed against her leg, she laced her fingers through his fur, and together they stepped into the water.

The soft green light faded away as they sank down through the water into darkness, and they found themselves standing in dark woods. The sky overhead was dark and empty of stars, and though there was a stark bright light coming through the trees ahead and a little to the left, they could see very little. Susan stood there for several minutes, looking around in the silence, her fingers still twined through the dog's thick hair. She listened for the sound of the horn, but heard only far-off noises of animals, coming closer—scampering and rustling and the padding of paws. Several small animals dashed past, running in the direction of that light, and she turned to see where it was coming from. Then, with a yelp, the dog jumped and tore away. She whirled and saw, behind her, the great gleaming eye of a dragon closing in on her, and she _ran_.

All around her, thousands of creatures of every shape and size—Beasts and Birds, Dwarfs and Fauns, Giants and Men and creatures she had never seen before—were running, too, pursued by dragons and giant lizards and flying, bat-winged reptiles. They say that when one is about to die, one's life flashes before your eyes. Susan had never had such a thing happen to her, but as she ran, dodging through the trees, toward that fierce and terrible light, she remembered every deed she had ever done, good and bad. She had longed so for the Lion and Narnia that she had pretended not to care, but small things and not only big came to mind. From the first rush of affection when her mother placed her little brother in her arms or the piece of candy she took when she was two and her mother wasn't looking; to the flowers intended for Lucy's grave, given instead to a withered old grandmother on the street, or the short answer she had given Aunt Alberta the day before—each one stood out in sharp relief as if floodlit like the blades of grass beneath her feet.

Her breath came short and fast, and there was a stitch in her side, but the dragon was still behind her and still she ran. She heard horses and Centaurs galloping behind her. A bear ran beside her. Ahead, she thought she could see the black dog that had come with her, but there was no time to be certain. There were thousands and millions of creatures, large and small, running toward the light. They were out from among the trees now and the light, hot and white and terrible, was blindingly bright. When she looked directly at it—just for a split-second—she saw the golden Lion in the center of that light, brighter than the rest, beautiful and ferocious. Her eyes watered and she blinked but could not look away, still rushing onward, coming ever and ever nearer to that terrible brightness.

She was very near now, panting, scrambling up the hill, unable to stop. She saw that the light came from the looming door of a rough-hewn stable or shed. To the right, black and gaping, an utter void stretched away like a terrible shadow. Some of the creatures running up the hill ahead of her went straight on, plunging into the fiery light and disappearing behind it. Others shied and turned away to be swallowed up in the blackness like the mouth of the underworld.

And now she was at the top of the hill, with no one between her and the light. She was no longer aware of the Animals and Men and Women behind her or the dragons farther back. She felt only the pure, white, gold light all around her, blinding-bright like the all-consuming atom bomb, fierce and burning hot like the center of the sun. The terrible, beautiful golden eyes shone out of the middle onto hers; and terrified, trembling, she could not look away. The eyes went right through her like knives, and she would have thought she could not bear it, but she longed to get closer and closer, though it was death.

Somehow, she took a step—another—fearing—trembling—and loved Him.


	3. Anointed with Oil

**AN: Well, it's been longer than I thought it would be. I did take my AP test, and I think I did all right on it. We'll find out in July.**

**Anyway, I'm DONE with what Willow calls "chemystery," at least for a couple of years, and I've been fiddling with this chapter for the last several days. Originally I had a very different ending, where Susan came through the Door and found herself in Cair Paravel, but then I spent a couple of days re-reading LB and I saw that Tirian had all sorts of reunions with friends coming through the Door, but that the others are not mentioned much. Which makes sense, LB being from Tirian's POV, but one thing led to another and this version came together. It came together a lot larger than I intended, the "epilogue" turning into "chapter three and last" and then "chapter three of four." I hope to have the fourth (and last!) chapter up much quicker than this one was. **

**Thank you, again, to Willow and Laura for proofreading, to Willow for the ongoing back-and-forth between Edmund and Susan about whether Edmund eats enough, and to WritingMum for pertinent suggestions. I have made minor edits to a few lines in the first two chapters on WritingMum's advice.**

**If this was Lewis's version, Susan would be in England.**

* * *

_Thou anointest my head with oil;  
My cup runneth over.  
~ Psalm 23_

* * *

It seemed she stood for all eternity in His terrible, burning gaze. Then she was through the Door. She had come through on the Lion's right side, one single Daughter of Eve in a great river of Narnians and Calormenes and Archenlanders and People from Beyond the Sea, all flowing between the door-posts and rippling around the Lion as He stood there, solid as a mountain rooted in the rock.

The light was just as strong as before, but her eyes must have grown stronger, for now she could see that it came from a great crowd of shining ones who stood just ahead and to the right of her. But all this she saw in just a glimpse, for her eyes were drawn at once to Seven who stood between her and the Shining Ones. They were tall, beautiful to look upon, and crowned with gold; seven mail-clad Kings and silk-gowned Queens of Narnia. They, too, stood like rocks as the incoming tide of Men and Beasts flowed around them. She gazed at them, wondering. Then one of the Queens—the golden-haired one—darted forward with a cry of "Susan!"

_Lucy._ Lucy was dead, and yet somehow Susan could feel her arms, warm and solid, as they wrapped around her. Edmund was there, too, his brown eyes glowing at her—and Peter, beaming in a puzzled but delighted way.  
Then Lucy let her go and she, sharply remembering every time she had laughed at them, moved to kneel at Peter's feet, but he caught her up and embraced her so she thought her ribs would crack. And Edmund, too, squeezed her tight. He was taller and stronger than she remembered him being in years, and not nearly so thin. The next few minutes were mostly hugging and kissing and crying and laughing. Perhaps you will understand a bit of what Lucy and Peter and Edmund had felt, if someone in your family has ever gone away for several weeks. Perhaps you remember the vague emptiness when all is outwardly well but one is missing, and how wonderful it is when he or she returns and your circle is again complete. I do not know how to describe Susan's feelings, but I think it safe to say she was happier than ever before in her life.

All around them friends were being reunited with long-dead comrades. Eustace and Jill, the Professor and Aunt Polly came and greeted her with hugs and words of welcome. Eustace introduced her to "the Last King of Narnia," a young man named Tirian who looked at her with wide eyes and bowed respectfully. Then a large black Dog bounded into their circle and greeted Susan and Lucy. He was the very same dog who once, in another world and long ago, been Lucy's, and who had come with Susan. Aslan had granted him the gift of Speech when he passed through the Door, and now he introduced himself as Dillon, and licked Lucy's face. Everybody was asking questions of everybody else, and the answers were getting more and more muddled, when Eustace suddenly said, "Look! The dragons!"

Then they all turned back to see what was happening on the other side of the Doorway. Aunt Polly and the Professor were arm-in-arm, Eustace and Jill were standing together, and Tirian had his arm over the Unicorn's neck. But I think Susan was the happiest of all, for Edmund had one of her hands tucked into his arm, Lucy was pressed against her other side, their arms around each other, and Peter stood behind her with his hand clasped on her shoulder. So they stood together, the Kings and Queens of Narnia (Susan, too, was somehow no longer in black, but crowned and wearing a dark green gown that she remembered with surprise as her favorite from the Golden Age of Narnia). Together they watched as the Dragons and Monsters, the Giant Lizards and Serpents went to and fro across Narnia, trampling bushes, ripping up trees, and craunching great oaks like sticks of celery.

The grass dried up and blew away, leaving every rock and clod of dirt to stand out in sharp relief. Nearly directly ahead of them, only a little to the right, the Hill of the Stone Table was outlined against the paler shadow of the starless sky. The Table itself was of course buried within the How that had been built atop the Hill, but Susan recognized it yet. When all the vegetation was trampled or eaten, the Dragons and Lizards lay down here and there. One, a green-and-purple winged thing with eyes that glinted yellow—Susan thought it the very one that had haunted her dreams—coiled itself carelessly atop Aslan's How. Then all the monsters died, and their flesh withered and shriveled away until there was nothing to see except bleached-white skeletons seemingly hundreds of years old. And a dreadful, deathly stillness hung over everything.

After a long time, a line of glistening white came moving towards them from the east. It was the sea, rising to swallow the earth. The flat curves of the Great River widened. Had the River God and his Naiad daughters abandoned their currents and streams? Susan thought of the way they had saluted Aslan long ago when the land was bursting its bonds and gushing with new life, and a tear trickled down her cheek.

The dark hollow where Dragon's Mere had been spread now into a lake and overflowed into the Great River; the sea, meeting the snaky line of the River Rush, roared onward to swallow up the lake that had been Dragon's Mere. The Archen Mountains crumbled like sand-castles in a rising tide, slipping down into the water with noisy splashes. But the twin-headed peak of Mount Pire, solid rock down to their roots, did not collapse, though the waves beat at them. The green slopes of Archenland, the secret tunnels of Aslan's How, the shining castle of Cair Paravel, the windswept Northern moors, the moonlit glade of Dancing Lawn, all were now underwater, but the iron bar of the Lamppost, where it had all begun, had somehow withstood the rampage of monsters and its flame flickered palely still, until it too was swallowed in swirling, roaring water. The foam splashed through the very Doorway itself and wet Aslan's paws, but the sea came no further.

Then in the east there appeared a streaky, blood-red dawn. It stretched wider and brighter with a draining light until at last the sun came up, guttering wan and ghastly over the empty, formless waters. Peter's hand tightened on Susan's shoulder. An the Moon, the silvery Moon by whose light the Fauns used to dance with the Nymphs, rose also—but not in the South where she was wonted to rise from the South Wind's cloud-ovens, but next to the Sun. Her bleached silver was stained his bloody crimson. He stretched out long tentacles of greedy flames, and licked at her until he swallowed her up.

Then Aslan said, "Now make an end."

And the giant (Father Time, Lucy whispered to Susan) threw into the sea the horn that had woken Susan from her sleep in the Wood. He stretched out one long black arm and he snuffed out the sun like a candle, plunging everything into utter darkness. A blast of ice-cold air whistled through the Doorway, covering its edges with icicles, and everyone jumped back.

"Peter, High King of Narnia," said Aslan. "Shut the Door."

Peter stepped forward, leaned out into the empty blackness, and pulled the Door to, scraping it over the icicles. Then with hands clumsy and numb from the cold, he took out a golden key and locked the Door.

Of the all the strange things they had seen there, the strangest by far was to look around and see warm yellow sunshine streaming from the deep blue sky above, bits of flowers and lush green grass beneath, and laughter in Aslan's eyes. He stooped and kissed Susan's forehead, saying, "Welcome, Susan, returned Queen of Narnia."

Then he whirled, lashing himself with his tail, and shot away like a golden arrow. "Come further in! Come further up!" he cried over his shoulder, and they set out westward after him, walking.


	4. In the House of the Lord

**AN: Thank you, gentle readers, for your patience. My choir had its spring concert, I had my spring voice recital, and both went very well. I've been working against some end-of-May deadlines, but today Seraphim Earl prodded me into finishing this up and posting it. It's long, but I trust you shan't mind.  
**

**Susan belongs to Aslan. Chrysophylax the Dragon's name is borrowed from _Farmer Giles of Ham, _with apology to Tolkien. Reedywhistle, Elinda, and—well, the others didn't make it into this already-oversized chapter, but I made them up all by myself. The conversation about New Narnia is taken directly from LB, though part of one line is given to someone other than originally.  
**

**Thank you, again, to WillowDryad and Laura Andrews for their faithful beta work, and to every single one of my reviewers for reading and commenting.**

* * *

_Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life:  
And I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever.  
Psalm 23_

* * *

"So," said Peter, "Night falls on Narnia. What, Lucy! You're not _crying_? With Aslan ahead and all of us here?"

But Susan, too, was weeping. She could not help it, when she thought of all their beloved land drowned in the deep ocean and lying forever under the still and death-silent waters.

All of them, in fact, were rather solemn at the thought of all they had seen through the door. Jill was sniffling into Eustace's handkerchief. Aunt Polly was dabbing at her eyes; the Professor was gruffly clearing his throat. Even the noble Dillon's ears drooped, and Tirian shed the tears of a King for his motherland.

Slowly, they walked together away from the door, talking as they went. All were curious to hear how Susan had joined them, but she smiled and shook her head. "Tell me how you came to be here. You—you wer how did it begin?"

The others looked at each other, for it was one of those stories that is layered and must be told carefully to make sense. After a pause, the Professor cleared his throat and explained from the beginning—not the _very _beginning, of course, for every beginning comes from another ending, save the Beginning of It All, which is Aslan Himself and His Father-Over-the-Sea—but the beginning of the things Susan did not know, which was the meeting the Professor had called of the Friends of Narnia, while Susan had been in America. Then Tirian (with interjections from Eustace and Jill) told of the Ape's deception, of the last days of Narnia and the last desperate fight, and of how they had come through the door and met High King Peter and the rest.

"But of a truth, Madam, we did not then expect you to join us," said Tirian, bowing. Eustace and Jill had told much of the story; Tirian was still a little tongue-tied in the presence of such famed Kings and Queens and Heroes as they.

Then Peter explained how he and the others had come, from the London train and platform, to be where they were. Susan thought of her mother and father, who also had left her on that dreadful day, but before she said anything, Peter turned to her with a smile he usually reserved for Lucy.

"And you, Su? How did you come here?"

Lucy squeezed her hand when she spoke (briefly) of the gray months in Cambridge, Dillon wagged his tale at her chance finding of the Rings, the Wood Between the Worlds; and Lady Polly nodded at her account of the Door. Edmund had, up until then, said little, but now he squeezed her arm and whispered in her ear,

"I knew you would come."

So they wandered westward, talking to one another of old wars and old peace and ancient Kings and all the glories of Narnia. Susan said little, for her heart was too full of joy and she kept turning to look at the others—Lucy on her left, Edmund on her right, Peter beyond Lucy. At first she hardly dared to believe them real, yet there they were: Lucy's dimples peeping out as she laughed in sheer delight; Edmund and Eustace reminiscing of the Dawn Treader and the glories at the End of the World; and Peter and Tirian discussing (of all things) Calormen and Lone Island politics over the centuries. Jill was walking with the Unicorn, the Dog was somewhere ahead, and Aunt Polly and the Professor were talking softly together.

It was all quietly happy, and Susan had time to think as they walked. She remembered all the happy years in Narnia—the first feast after Beruna, the first happy march along the River to Cair Paravel, the coronation, the first meeting with King Lune and Queen Ilene of Archenland and their newborn Princes, the dances and feasts and sailing.

She remembered the friends they had known. Some were men and women from Archenland and the Islands, Narnians at heart, whose fathers and grandfathers had fled the Witch a century earlier and who returned with spring to the land of their belonging. Some were good Narnians freed by Aslan's breath from their stony prisons in the Witch's House, who, no longer having family or place to call home, came to the Cair and there made up the first household—such as old Reedywhistle, the cantankerous Wiggle, who had set off up the coast after the coronation, only to return a fortnight later, muttering about the frivolity of young Wiggles in this day and age; then installed himself as ferryman across the mouth of the Great River.

But dearest of all in her memory, besides her own family, was her too-short friendship with Queen Ilene of Archenland and her love for the Queen's imp of a son, Prince Corin. He and his twin brother were born a week after her twelfth birthday; he was but half-past-four and she, sixteen when his mother died. She became something like a mother to him, he something like a son to her, and he called her his aunt until the week after his fifteenth birthday, when she, with her sister and brothers, vanished from Narnia.

It was memories such as these that had pained her until she could no longer speak of them, until she tried to forget them entirely. She had not yet lost, then, her brothers and sister, nor her mother and father, but nearly every day she thought of those who had been dear as family. Had Lune ever remarried, or did he live jolly and contented with his sons, his horses, and his beloved dogs for the rest of his days? What of Corin? As a boy he had maintained a scorn for girls, "Save only Queen Lucy and you, madam," and when older had never shown interest in any lady of either court. Had he settled down and married, or had he gone roving, as he always said he would, in search of adventure? And his brother, Cor, who had been lost so long and then had come back, along with an escaped Tarkeena—surely he and the girl had married and become King and Queen after Lune. But had their rule been peaceful? And how many sons had Aslan given them?

But now the Dogs were barking, and Susan gave herself a little shake. Perhaps she would here find the answers to her questions, (for indeed it seemed the sort of place where questions could be asked and answers received) but for now her family was around her and the hills were so green, the Trees (and they were Trees, not trees) so ruggedly noble, the River so clear and deep and quietly murmuring to itself, that she would be content.

They wandered on, joined soon by Emeth the Calormene soldier and Puzzle the Donkey. There was a morning freshness to the air, there seemed to be plenty of time, and they kept stopping to look round. The river, the green hills, the blue mountains ahead of them and the deeper blue sky above were so beautiful that at last Lucy said

"Peter, where is this, do you suppose?"

They discussed it. Peter did not know. Tirian thought it Aslan's country, but Jill said it wasn't like the bit of Aslan's country she had seen. Edmund nodded at the mountains ahead, suggesting they looked like the mountains westward of Narnia. Lucy shook her head, but pointed at the hills to their south, and the mountains beyond.

"Aren't they very like the southern border of Narnia?" she said.

They all looked for a moment, and then Edmund cried, "Like! Why, they're exactly like. Look, there's—"

"Mount Pire," said Susan quietly. And it _was,_ good old twin-peaked Mount Pire, only taller and bluer and craggier than ever before.

Farsight the Eagle sprang into the air for a better look. It was Narnia herself, he told them—the wide, shining curves of the Great River, the thinner line of the River Rush, the northern moors, the tree-capped height of Aslan's How, and far away on the horizon, the sparkling line of the sea and, star-bright, Cair Paravel of the Four Thrones—all was there.

Then Professor Kirke spoke, and his voice and words stirred them all like a silver trumpet when he told them that this, truly, was Narnia, and the old Narnia had been only a pale shadow of the real thing.

When they realized _that_, Jewel the Unicorn stamped his hoof, gave a great cry of joy, and sprang into a gallop. Then everyone began to run after him, and all of them—not only the Dogs and Horses—even short-legged Poggin the Dwarf kept up with him, and Susan's long skirts hindered her not at all.

Faster and faster they ran. The wind, filled with lovely scents, blew their hair back from their faces. The river rushed swifter and swifter past them, and they rushed swifter and swifter past the river, until they came to Caldron Pool and the jagged cliff above it, and they all plunged into the delicious foamy coolness of the water.

"Isn't it wonderful?" said Lucy. "One can't feel afraid."

And it was true. Susan had thought for a moment she _was_ afraid, but now she realized she wasn't. She had been afraid for a long, long time, but all that seemed to have burned away in the Lion's gaze, leaving only a thrill and exhilaration of adventure, which she had not felt for a long time.

One after the other, they swam (or climbed) _up_ the Great Waterfall as it plunged—bubbling, sparkling, and shot through with bits of jeweled lights—from its clifftop. Laughing, shouting, splashing, they crested its brink and ran on down a long green valley toward the snowy mountains ahead. Faster and faster and faster still they sped, until they were running faster than a horse gallops when the hounds are hot on the scent and baying after the fox; swifter than a ship flying on a western wind to the End of the World; stronger than an Eagle born by mighty winds a mile above the tree-tops; straighter than a goose-fletched arrow from Queen Susan's bow.

Through the winding, riven, tree-lined valleys, over smoothly rolling hills and knolls and even small mountains, across and through clear cold brooks and lakes, they ran, until a green mountain rose up before them, smooth and tall as a pyramid reaching to heaven. Round the very top ran a wall, greener even than the grass and shining like emerald. Higher still, above the wall there were branches of trees whose trunks were flames—silver flames—and whose apples were gold.

Straight up the mountain they ran, following the Unicorn, until they came to the very top, where great golden gates, set in the emerald wall, guarded the silver trees and the golden fruit. The gates were closed, and for a moment something—it was not disappointment, exactly, but a feeling that one must be invited to enter the garden—held them back from going any closer.

Then the note of a horn—a horn like a trumpet, a horn like a clarion, a horn like her own horn long ago—blew from inside the wall, and the gates swung open. They all held their breaths to see what would come through the gates. And who was it? A sleek, bright-eyed Talking Mouse with a red feather in his circlet and a rapier at his side!

"Welcome, in the Lion's name," he said. "Come further up and further in."

Then Susan and Peter and Edmund and Lucy, and Eustace also, rushed forward to greet the Mouse, crying, "Reepicheep!" For it was he—the very same Mouse who had lead his Mouse band to fight for Narnia against Miraz; who, after the battle, had shown himself to be the most courteous and perfect of knights; who had sailed with King Caspian and Edmund and Lucy and Eustace to the World's End; and who, his nose quivering with glee, had sailed right over the Edge of the world. But Susan had no more time to think about that, for two arms were clasped about her.

"Susan, dearest! Art grown tall and lovely!"

"Ilene!" she cried. For so it was, but her hair was thick and curling, not pale and limp as it had been when last she saw her, and her cheeks were plump and rosy, no longer wan. And as they hugged and kissed and laughed, Susan saw that Peter was being heartily embraced by King Lune, and Edmund was slapping someone on the back—someone husky and broad-shouldered, with a mop of blond curls.

Ilene, laughing, released her. "'Twould be ill-mannered of me to keep thee all mine, when Corin hath been more anxious even than I to see thee."

It was Corin. The little boy who had tangled her knitting and given her jammy kisses and knocked down any who offended the Queen's honor—he was taller than she, now, and filled out into solid muscle—but he was still Corin.

"Aunt Susan!" he shouted, picking her up and swinging her around. "Hast come at last!"

"Aye," she said, breathless from his exuberance. "Well met, Prince. Hast comported thyself in dignity since last our paths crossed?"

He set her down and bowed.

"Indeed, madam, no Prince hath been so well mannered as I." His earnest expression assumed an injured air. "But of a truth, is this a time for scoldings?"

It was not, and they both laughed. Many ancient Kings and Queens and heroes and dear friends were coming from within the garden to welcome them, and all around there was the glad sound of greetings and reunions.

"Rememberest my brother, Aunt?" said Corin.

Of course she did; she had not known him so well as Corin, but she had thought of him often in the years he had been missing, and she had welcomed him as warmly as any when he was returned. Now here he was again, with his wife Queen Aravis. He introduced Susan to his son Ram, who had been King of Archenland and was called "the Great;" and to his daughter, Raina, who had been the next Queen of Narnia after Susan and Lucy.

Aunt Polly and Professor Digory were reunited with Fledge the Winged Horse. There was a tickly, whiskerish embrace for Lucy from Trufflehunter the Badger; delighted kisses and exclamations from her old friend Elinda; big, solid bearhugs from King Lune for Susan and Edmund and Lucy, not only Peter; and hearty handshaking all around when King Rilian the Disenchanted met Eustace and Jill again. There was King Caspian the Seafarer with his lovely bride, Aurora, the Daughter of the Star, and Mr. Tumnus and the Beavers from so very long ago, and the joy was so sweet they could taste it. Susan was even glad when she caught a glimpse of old Chrysophylax, Lucy's dragon friend, in all his green armor.

All together then, they went further up and further in to where Aslan was waiting (how she longed for a chance to speak with the Lion, and at the right time He spoke to her), and their own dear mother and father, who first had taught them the meaning of honor and love, were there.

Thus all the many friends of Narnia came home to the place for which they had always longed, and hand-in-hand they all started up the great, jeweled, rainbow staircase that leads I know not where. Perhaps it goes on forever, always curving around and showing new delights and pleasant places. All I do know is, that was the beginning of the greatest adventure of all, one that never grew old and never came to an end.

_~ introitus ~_


End file.
